Let's come back a year from now, after MS has done to the tablet market what it did to the console market and talk then...

What did MS do to the console market? They are still facing two long standing, entrenched competitors and spent billions to even get to this point. I think you have a logical disconnect here. The Surface is out right now and not exactly selling gangbusters either.

People are not upgrading on Microsofts preferred schedule because system power has long outstripped resource demand from applications. Gaming is one area where this isn't the case but thanks to Microsofts own console efforts people have many choices in the gaming market. I've been saying for a long time that Microsoft has been devaluing its own properties this way but people kept blah blahing about how important the living room is. The living room has too many competitors and MS doesnt have the Apple cachet to demand large profit margins there.